Colonised and colonising: The white Australian feminist subject

Abstract

The feminist project in settler societies was profoundly shaped by white women's double identity as both colonised and colonising. They defined themselves in opposition to both the Old World oppressions of Britain and the older local ‘primitivisms’ of indigenous people. The imperative of the ‘advancement of women’ depended upon assumptions about the ‘backwardness’ of other women. In that sense, feminism was inherently imperialistic. Feminism's goal of the ‘independence’ of women was formulated n a context of preoccupation with ‘sex slavery’, evident to white women in the ‘chattel’ status of Aboriginal women and the white slave traffic, perpetrated by British agents at home and away. © 1993 T..